Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
I’m not sleeping, I text a few nights later. I’m only telling you because you said I had to. Don’t call me. I’m serious.
He calls me.
I reject the call and viciously text him.
I said don’t call me!
Talk to me, he texts back.
I have nothing to say. I’m depressed and sleepless. You don’t have to baby me.
I’m not babying you, he insists. Talk to me.
—
What’s wrong with me? I text him a few days after that.
In what context?
I went to a noodle shop, couldn’t decide what to order, so I left. Why can’t I properly feed myself? It’s annoying!
There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re getting used to a new reality. You don’t know how to live right now. It’ll all come back. You’ll take care of yourself again someday.
The thing about bodies is that some of us, even when we don’t know how to live, just keep right on living, no matter how poorly we feed and water ourselves. And then some of us, like Lou, don’t get to keep on living. Our bodies just give way and the world rushes right past.
And I’m here, sitting on the curb in front of the noodle shop, forehead pressed to my knees, dripping tears onto my jeans.
Time heals all wounds, they say. Well, I can picture myself in ten years. It’s crystal clear. I’m still sitting on this curb, utterly disoriented that I’m the one still alive and she’s still gone.
Where are you? he texts.
I lurch to my feet. The threat of him finding me to force-feed me noodles has me actioning.
Don’t come find me! I text.
I’m going to parachute in from a chopper with a turkey sandwich.
Improbably, I laugh. Turkey doesn’t fly well. Maybe peanut butter is the wiser choice.
Just go back to the apartment, he texts. I’ll order takeout foryou.
Wait! Don’t! I’m too far away!
Where are you? he texts again. And then when I don’t answer fast enough:
Lenny…
I have to ’fess up. I accidentally fell asleep on the train. I made it out to Queens and got off to find something to eat. There. You’re caught up now. Don’t yell at me.
Go home and eat.
An hour later I’m lying on the bed next to an unopened takeout bag.
I take a quick selfie doing a peace sign. He’ll recognize the blue-and-gray bedspread under my head and know where I am.
I purposefully do not study exactly how terrible I look in this photo. Raccoon eyes and dry skin and drab brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail because what else am I gonna do with this mess?
Now that he knows where I am, he’s not texting back. My bad selfie sits like a punctuation mark at the end of our chat. I can’t bear it.
Did this horrific picture of me scare you away? I ask after a while. Come on. Pic for pic.
Eat dinner, he texts back.
Boring. Send nudes.
There’s soy sauce in the cabinet if you need it, he texts.
When I get back to my phone there’s a text waiting for me from Miles. It’s a very close-up picture of the pasta he’s eating for dinner.
Not those kinds of noods! I text him.
—
Sometimes he texts me first.
For instance, tonight:
Are you doing something dumb right now.
No! I text back. Yes. I’m about to fall asleep at a bar. I stand up and drag my ass out onto the street. Define dumb.
Lenny. ISTG.
Look at you with your acronyms! You’re so hip.
Go get in bed.
I suppose you’re doing something totally normal and healthy right now?
None of your business.
Hey! If I have to report my comings and goings to you, then it should be mutual.
He texts me a picture of two big feet crossed on his coffee table and a Tom Cruise movie on a television screen in the background.
Oooh! Is that MI4 ? I’m coming over right now.
But he doesn’t let me ogle Tom Cruise. Instead he rents a classic and, much to my grumbling, we cross number 6, watch The Godfather and finally understand what everyone is talking about, off the list.
I fall asleep on his couch and when I wake up, I’ve been folded like a pie crust into blankets. There’s a proper pillow under my head and a glass of water on the coffee table where his feet were last night. Dawn is clearing its throat outside. I fold everything neatly when I leave and head back into the world.
—
But most of the time, I text him first.
I’ve been crying for almost three hours straight, I text him one night.
Good job. Get it all out.
He doesn’t understand. My fingers shake as I type the next words. I want to stop but I can’t.
Okay. Be there soon.
He must know how to teleport, because I swear I’ve barely received the text before he’s knocking on the door to the studio apartment.
When I answer the door for him, he can’t hide his wince.
Have you ever seen those big suspended slabs of cow that Rocky beats the shit out of? Pretty sure that’s what my face looks like right now.
I drop to a squat and cover my expression with my hands.
“You need water,” he decides, toeing his shoes off. His fingers touch the top of my head very lightly as he walks past. When he comes back with a tall glass of room-temperature tap water, he sits down right next to me and gently pushes my shoulder so that I land backward on my butt. The motion unfolds my pose and I reach for the water, finishing the glass in ten gulping seconds.
I breathe raggedly and can’t catch air. A minute or so passes and then Miles pushes his knee against mine. “What are you holding in?”
“What?”
“Look, with this kind of pain, you can’t hold it in or hide it or swerve it. The only way out is through. So what is it?”
I make a choked sound and fold down over my gut. “I don’t even know.” I’m a sobbing mess. “Today was fine. Today was fine. Good even? This feels so random that it’s hitting me like this right now. It’s been months and I just don’t understand why I’m not getting better. At all. I can’t breathe. I can’t live, Miles. I can’t.”
He takes my hand and uncurls my fingers. He presses hard on the muscle between my thumb and pointer. It’s such acute pressure I gasp. When he releases the hold my chest expands by an inch. Air rushes in.
He does it to the other hand as well. “Look,” he says low. “Consider it like you just had a heart transplant. When Lou died, your entire heart went with her. But you have to live, right? So now you’ve got this new heart. And you’re getting used to it. No one would expect you to run up a hill right after a heart transplant. Go slow. Go easy on yourself.”
I press my hands to my heart, one over the other. “I can’t believe people survive this.”
He nods. “Most of the time life is easy, but we think it’s hard. Then something actually hard happens.” His knee knocks mine again. “It’s normal not to know how to get to the other side. You’ve never done it before.”
“How did you do it?”
“I took it second by second. Sometime soon you’ll be getting from minute to minute and then day by day. And so on. But…the point isn’t trying to get where you’re not. The point is just…enduring.”
What an awful word. Like a curse. Next time I want to say fuck you to somebody I’ll just shout endure it instead.
I curl to my side and before my head touches the hardwood there’s a pillow being shoved under my ear. “I want to carry a framed eight-by-ten of her everywhere I go. If I’m with people who didn’t know her,” I continue, “I want to talk about her incessantly. If I’m with people who did know her, I can’t figure out why they’re not talking about her incessantly.”
There’s a beat of silence and then he says, “Then do it.”
“Do what?”
“Talk about her incessantly. Let’s say…two hours? That should be enough to get us started at least. If you need more time, we can add some. Tell me anything you want, in as much detail as you want. And you don’t have to worry about pleasantries or asking about my life or checking to see if I’m bored. For two hours, I’ll listen. No strings.”
I peek up at him. “Seriously?”
He grabs another pillow and situates himself on his back, eyes up to the ceiling. “Shoot.”
Now that I’ve been given permission to say anything I want about her, I have no idea where to start.
“…Lou and I had our own world.”
He laughs. “I can tell.”
“How?”
He rolls his head to look at me. “It’s written all over everything you do and say. Like a signature, or a fingerprint or something.”
And so I tell him about our world together. Yankees games where we wore all the swag and ate all the hot dogs and scrambled for foul balls but chatted through the game and couldn’t tell you the score if our lives depended on it. Getting accidentally sunburned at Coney Island once a summer no matter how vigilantly we tried to prevent it. Screaming with laughter in changing rooms at how absolutely terrible we looked in ill-fitting yet apparently fashionable outfits.
Dozens of inside jokes I attempt to explain: a jar of peanut butter left behind in the shower. Granny panties as a birthday gift. A box of condoms hidden in the tampon box.
It is mostly nonsense but he’s laughing in most of the right places, a steady stream of tissues passed from the tissue box to my hand.
To my surprise, I don’t make it to two hours. After about forty-five minutes my throat is dry and I’m not crying anymore. Words and panic are no longer taking turns slinging themselves at the fence lining the edges of my brain.
I roll to my side and study his profile. He’s got a grizzly bear brow and a sharp line of a mouth. I like his nose. It’s got a bump at the bridge. He reminds me of a gravel road. At night. With nothing but headlights to show you what comes next.
When he seems to realize that I’ve run out of steam, he stands and gets me another glass of water.
“Thank you,” he says as I drink it down.
I blink up at him. “For what? I should be thanking you. ”
“For telling me about her. I know it’s not easy to talk about her. Just like it’s not easy to not talk about her. But you’re trying. So, thanks.”
He lies back down on his pillow and reaches one long arm up, over me, and drags a blanket off the bed. It’s big enough to cover me completely and to cover one of his legs. That seems to work for him, though, because he crosses his arms over his chest, lets his head tip toward me, and closes his eyes.
“Miles,” I whisper.
“Hm.”
“…”
His eyes peek open at my pause.
I can see from his expression that there’s nothing I actually need to say out loud right now. My eyelids get heavy and when I blink them back open, he’s still gazing at me.